Susan Horton had been a stay-at-home mom for almost 20 years, and now—pregnant with her fifth child—she felt a hard-won confidence in herself as a mother.
Then she ate a salad from Costco.
Horton didn’t realize that she would be drug-tested before her child’s birth. Or that the poppy seeds in her salad could trigger a positive result on a urine drug screen, the quick test that hospitals often use to check pregnant patients for illicit drugs. Many common foods and medications—from antacids to blood pressure and cold medicines—can prompt erroneous results.
If Horton had been tested under different circumstances—for example, if she was a government employee and required to be tested as part of her job—she would have been entitled to a more advanced test and to a review from a specially trained doctor to confirm the initial result.
And let me guess, she paid for the privilege of being forced to stay 5 days and having her baby taken away from her? Unless she’s got amazing insurance?
Honestly, I’m so glad to live somewhere with public health care.
Tbf I don’t think she wants a payout … she just wants her kid back (and maybe have the testing protocols updated to follow the science instead of the stupidity).
For decades, state and federal laws have required hospitals across the country to identify newborns affected by drugs in the womb and to refer such cases to child protective services for possible investigation. To comply, hospitals often use urine drug screens that are inexpensive (as little as $10 per test), simple to administer (the patient pees in a cup), and provide results within minutes.
If Horton had been tested under different circumstances—for example, if she was a government employee and required to be tested as part of her job—she would have been entitled to a more advanced test and to a review from a specially trained doctor to confirm the initial result.
Gonna call “hinky” on this.
Back when I had a job that required regular drug testing we WERE told to not eat poppy seeds. But my understanding is that, unless you have other digestive issues (not sure if a baby would count?), it is incredibly unlikely to test positive unless you are mainlining poppy seeds for weeks on end. Its similar to how getting a whiff of something dank isn’t going to make you test positive but you should still avoid those scenarios.
The issue is that if you pissed hot you would immediately need a much more expensive (since you need a proper professional rather than someone who signed a form saying they won’t pleasure themselves while watching you pee…) blood test. And, in the case of contractors, they would then need to deal with the union reps who would fight tooth and nail to ensure that blood test never happens and it is just a headache for everyone. And you can bet those reps always insisted people had just eaten a single poppy seed muffin. Same with the Super Important Parents of the nepo babies.
But yeah. It is fricking wild that it is immediate action without follow up. Especially when someone is going to be in the hospital for at least a day or two anyway.
It’s actually fairly easy to fail a drug test from poppy seeds. It’s literally where we get opium from. You do not need digestive issues, or even a ton of poppyseeds.
It takes like half a teaspoon.
Also not all poppyseeds are created equal. Some contain far more/less alkaloids than others.
Source: I fucking tested it. Go buy some drug tests and organic poppyseeds.
“Easy” is a stretch.
Yes, poppy seeds are the seeds of the poppy plant which is a large component of opium. But they are not actually opium and your body tends to digest the seeds (which are likely already broken down by the cooking process and however long they were in a jar) different than if you were to process and smoke or inject them. Which tends to lead toward trace amounts that should be below most thresholds… unless you are particularly dehydrated or otherwise didn’t digest the seeds properly.
A big part of the issue is that reputable research on how much you can get away with for a piss test tends to not be funded for whatever reason. It is the same reason that it is generally fine to use hemp based products (e.g. Dr Bronner’s) but nobody will ever put that in writing because there are too many unknowns and it just leads to a mess.
Or, going back to smelling something dank at a concert or on a trail? Guidance was always to be terrified and run away to at least five states over. But the reality is that you basically would need to be hot boxed to get enough contact THC from that. But the threshold between “someone in this outdoor venue is smoking a marijuana cigarette” and “I am stuck in a cloud of weed smoke” is very dependent on far too many factors. So it is easier to say “You get paid enough to just avoid it”
And of the less reputable studies (such as the “I am gonna eat poppy seeds and then piss hot”), they tend to have VERY wildly varying seeds. So stuff like fresh seeds off the plant and so forth.
Which is why I still find it wild that they would go from single piss test to action without a blood test. But not THAT wild since blood tests take significantly more time and money.
You don’t make opium from the seeds
You can wash them though and the “syrup” around contains morphine, codeine and stuff.
The seeds themselves don’t get processed, but the poppy cup gets cut so this white liquid flows on the outside.
That you scrape of and gets processed to opium or heroin.
No, it’s not easy to pop hot just from eating a dish with poppy seeds and it hasn’t been for a long time. The trace amounts aren’t nearly enough to reach the minimum threshold.
I would be 100% willing to believe hospital used substandard or defective tests, that she was on another legally prescribed medication that causes false positives, or even that the hospital administered opiates themselves, and through negligence and incompetece, forgot to put it in her chart.
But whenever someone says they ate a poppy seed muffin or salad, and that’s the only explanation they have, I’m immediately leaning towards actual opiates being the culprit.
Not saying it’s impossible these days, I’m saying it’s the least likely possible answer between those two options.
That said, this is the American healthcare system, so my money is on hospital error of some kind.
No, it’s not easy to pop hot just from eating a dish with poppy seeds and it hasn’t been for a long time.
Scientific proof please.
It looks like they flagged her because she missed multiple check up appointments prior to delivery too, which apparently is a common sign of drug abuse. It really just seems like she’s overwhelmed time-wise and really doesn’t need 5 children but that’s her choice as long as they aren’t harmed.
Well, one of her kids is obese, and I would call that abuse.
But the article was a whirlwind of dumb procedures and overreactions.
Well, one of her kids is obese, and I would call that abuse.
Personally I wouldn’t be so quick to judge on that. 1 out of 3 kids we can see in the photos is overweight, the other two look healthy. There might be something else at play with that one child, which is out of her control, we don’t know that.
Unreasonable assumption. The usual prenatal appointments are a recommendation, not a requirement. Many people don’t go to them, especially if they’ve already had kids and are familiar with the process.
Back when I had a job that required regular drug testing we WERE told to not eat poppy seeds. But my understanding is that, unless you have other digestive issues (not sure if a baby would count?), it is incredibly unlikely to test positive unless you are mainlining poppy seeds for weeks on end.
Your understanding is incorrect. It varies depending on the sensitivity of the test and the seeds being ingested, but it is actually quite possible for poppy seeds to trigger a false positive on a urine test for opiates, and it does happen. MythBusters tested this in their 3rd episode many years ago. They bought test kits that were publicly available for workplace testing and followed their instructions. They, like you, went in thinking it was just a myth. The plan was that they would continue ingesting foods with poppy seeds until they either got a positive test or they ate such ridiculous quantities that it wasn’t worth continuing. But they started getting positive results very quickly, (after just a few servings of either poppy seed bagels or poppy seed cake) and they stayed positive for a couple days. They called the companies that manufactured the tests and were assured repeatedly that it was not possible (because of course they would never admit that their tests can get false positive results). US Federal employers that test actually mandate that their tests have a much higher threshold because of this effect. But not everyone uses tests that adhere to that standard, and many are just way too sensitive.
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3306336/service-members-should-avoid-foods-with-poppy-seeds/
https://drugfoundation.org.nz/articles/mythbusters-poppy-seeds
https://www.usada.org/spirit-of-sport/education/can-poppyseeds-cause-a-positive-drug-test/
I loved Mythubsters but they were far from rigorous scientists (and Adam Savage says that every time he talks about Mythbusters to get Will Smith’s Tested some views).
Again, there are LOTS of variables involved including even whether the poppy seeds were washed or how sensitive the test is. My understanding is the disposable OTC-ish tests tend to be much higher sensitivity because they need to last a lot longer than chemicals in a lab.
Can it happen? Yes. Just like you CAN pop positive for THC from just walking too close to the stoners at a crag. But considering this was mass produced and processed salad dressing at a frigging costco? That is very much in the “oh god, I ate one poppy seed muffin!” territory. And considering that most of those arguments are geared toward people who will be unemployed if they piss hot, it is going to err on the side of caution.
Because there is a big gap between possible and probable. And you’ll note that almost all reputable sources say “it is possible and you should avoid this” in the same way that basically everything sold in California is potentially cancerous.
In fact, for Mythubsters in particular: I would need to rewatch that episode (… I need to rewatch most of their episodes, honestly) but they were always in downtown San Francisco, right? Could EASILY see a case where they got gourmet/organic poppy seed muffins rather than the insanely processed crap you find at a kroger (or a costco).
Going back to hemp oil and THC. From actual tests we totally didn’t misappropriate government lab resources to run, Bronners was incredibly processed and safe. But there was also enough variance bottle to bottle that I would never have (knowingly) risked it. We did basic statistics on the 4-ish bottles we tested but… money.
Whereas we also got a hold of some of the oil used at a local spa and that shit would have made Snoop Dogg dizzy.
I love MythBusters, but their results are inconvenient to my unfounded opinions
I wasn’t presenting Mythbusters as rigorous science, simply pointing out that a false positive is possible when using the tests as directed. If you want hard science, just go to Mayo Clinic’s practical guide for clinicians:
https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(11)61120-8/fulltext
Opiate screening cutoff levels for DHHS were changed from 300 ng/mL to 2000 ng/mL of morphine in December 1998 to avoid false-positive results from poppy-seed ingestion. However, the sensitivity for detecting true opiate use can be a concern,112 and most clinical laboratories continue to use the lower cutoff.53 Positive results for heroin abuse are caused by use of prescribed opiates, such as codeine and hydrocodone; however, ingestion of modest amounts of poppy seeds has been known to cause a positive result from urinalysis. Ingestion of poppy-seed cookies (containing about 1 teaspoon of poppy-seed filling available commercially in the United States for baking) produced positive results for opiates within 2 hours of ingestion among 5 patients.62 Codeine was also found in a concentration of 20 ng/mL in 2 samples 2 hours after ingestion. Urine samples analyzed after 24 hours were negative for opiates. Similar results were seen in another analysis in which consumption of poppy-seed bagels produced positive results for codeine and morphine up to 25 hours after ingestion.60 A single bagel was estimated to contain 1.5 mg of morphine and 0.1 mg of codeine. Similar results were observed in other analyses with slight variations ranging from 1 hour for earliest detection of morphine to 60 hours for the latest detection.20
They have citations with links. I’m not going to copy them all here.
When I did some reading on this subject in the past what I came across was that there is a difference between washed poppy seeds an unwashed poppy seeds which Is exactly as it sounds. Unwashed poppy seeds have a higher opiate content due to a thin coating on the outside that they likely picked up while still inside the seed pod. That seed pod is the primary source of opium. So, basically It can boil down to what company the poppy seeds were sourced from and whether or not they had been rinsed off with water prior to hitting the market.
Gonna call “hinky” on this.
Got scientific proof of that or is just a feewing you get?
Ah. Apologies. I thought I was speaking with an adult. Not a child who can’t have a conversation without randomly antagonizing others.
Have fun.
“I’m a white man with status and power, and I experience the world as great. As these women who don’t make as much money as me are just whining.”
Some people think they’re progressive and caring because they are involved in pro-Dem politics, when the Democrat party is centre-right.
Gonna call “hinky” on this.
Thanks for defending a human world which has been purposefully designed to harm other humans.
As the article states:
The harms of drug testing fall disproportionately on low-income, Black, Hispanic, and Native American women, who studies have found are more likely to be tested when they give birth, more likely to be investigated, and less likely to reunite with their children after they’ve been removed.
These are people about whom you do not really care, I suppose, so wishful thinking about how ‘isn’t the world great?’ is more important than compassion for other living beings, in this circumstance.
Mythbusters did an episode on this.
2 poppyseed bagels were enough to have them test positive: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MythBusters_pilot_episodes#Episode_P3_–_"Poppy-Seed_Drug_Test"
They remained positive for at least 8 more hours and by the next morning they had tested negative again.
This is a long, long article, but it’s 100% worth it. The entire thing is infuriating.
Agreed.
It sucks for everyone involved too. The mothers, the doctors, the hospital, the caseworkers, all seem to be locked into a ridiculous position because of poor testing equipment, and overly protective laws.
I’m getting worn out from all the crap to be infuriated about these days. It’s fucking overwhelming the amount of dumb-as-fuck shit capitalists, right-wingnuts and generally lazy people do to others, just for funsies it seems.
The internet has become a fury delivery system. The stories that infuriate us, they are designed for exactly that. Reality is something utterly apart from the stories.
Nice to see the western propaganda against poppy seeds still going strong. No wonder it’s so damn hard to buy reasonably priced seeds in NA to bake one of these puppies https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/Makowiec.jpg/440px-Makowiec.jpg
I sincerely hate Makowiec, but will eat it out of politeness (and will poke out some stuff due to “gluten”).
Had a funny funny with it at a festival a couple of years ago, just post the Covid restrictions. Had eaten a heavy load of poppy pastries that last week due to relatives birthdays and christenings, and I was pulled into “routine testing” as I was in a pretty “Happy” company at the festival where we all were held over night because some had taken illicit funsies.
Yeah, was a lot of misunderstandings and not fun.
